The Law of Unintended Consequences

The Law of Unintended Consequences and Chaos Theory held sway over India for most of the past week.

A band of robbers broke into the Ettayapuram palace under the totally excusable belief that a palace would contain wealth. Unfortunately, their faith was misplaced and they had to return empty handed.

The week started on a stormy note. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called himself an anarchist, stormed police barricades and vowed to disrupt the R-Day festivities.

The name Arvind indicates the god of intelligence who often visits earth to test and reward men for their wit. And boy did AK test our wit. He also tested the patience of people in every walk of life, from ministers in other states, political analysts, policemen and nearly all of us.

People were baffled to see a CM sleep on the road. In general, Indians are more used to seeing “indeterminate fasts” lasting an hour, and one where adjustable mattresses with air-coolers placed at protest sites.

Amidst all this chaos, the Chief Minister held a cabinet meeting in a car, signed files and governed the National Capital Region. This gave more incentive for physicists, theoretical and applied, to flock to India to study the impacts of the Chaos Theory.

Then, a Congress leader called BJP leader Modi a chaiwallah. Again the L of U.C. came into effect. Modi, whose name means 'lord of mankind', dwelt on this to good political effect. Tea-vendors are very popular nowadays.

Incidentally even as this was going on a tea vendor in the Chennai airport was arrested for amassing wealth “beyond his means” proving that tea sellers can rise up in life even if they stick to their chosen profession.

One of Kejriwal’s colleagues was berated when a comment he had made on Kerala nurses in an earlier avatar came to haunt him. Faced with The Wrath of the Woman, he excused himself by explaining that “comedy was scripted in a light hearted vein”.

Our capacity of tolerance was tested when questions arose whether Indians are “racist”. Indians whose most popular deities Rama & Krishna are celebrated for their dark skin, as is Draupadi, for whom millions perished, were heard singing Bharathiyar’s

காக்கை சிறகினிலே நந்தலாலா - நின்றன்

கரிய நிறம் தோன்றுதையே நந்தலாலா

Sons and grandsons of Congress leaders may now find politics closed as a career path. In Karnataka, protests rose when the Congress cleared the names of some of its leaders’ offspring for the coming LS polls.

India’s Finance Minister P Chidambaram was also affected by the Law of U C. In Davos he attacked the BJP’s policies as “regressive” and “retrograde” quite forgetting that both parties have an almost identical economic plan.

The same law also came into play when a magistrate probing a high-profile death ruled that the death could be one of three modes – homicidal, suicidal or accidental, leaving us to wonder what other methods there were that he had left out.

Civil servants of the discreet kind were equally baffled as to how to keep their wealth a secret. For, a recent ruling has held that a wife is entitled to know a Civil Servant’s pay.

And just when the Delhi drama was petering out the RBI, in a move to flush out black money and counterfeit notes, gave one half of India a way to find out how the other three-quarter lives. There is mad scramble from Madurai to Mathura and from Ahmedabad to Asansol as to how one can change hoarded piles of cash into the newly-defined legal tender.

You’ll be happy to note that technology has caught up with our very own masala dosa. In Madras it now costs around Rs 85 to get a decent MD, all because the hotels have tablets, finger-print scanners to mark attendance, etc., turning Saravana Bhavans into TIDEL Park lookalikes.

There was also a happy, although minor to some, end to this week. Don Bosco overcame a thriller of cricket match against Chettinad Vidyashram in an Under-16 match, despite the latter boasting a bowler who grabbed 4 for 23.